


More Than This

by puddlejumper99



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, High School AU, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mary POV, Mary is kind of awful but also there's very little explicit violence, Neil and Andrew are soft but the world is not, Non-Consensual Outing, Open Ending, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22231519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puddlejumper99/pseuds/puddlejumper99
Summary: Deborah and Neil Josten have been living in Oakland, California for four months, and Neil has been keeping secrets.
Relationships: Neil Josten & Mary Hatford, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 56
Kudos: 333





	More Than This

**Author's Note:**

> uhhh i think all you need for backstory here is that tilda took andrew in after juvie but they stayed in oakland. the rest should be pretty self-explanatory. oh and deborah is mary, if that wasn't clear. i wrote this basically in one go so sorry for any typos ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

The cool sun provided little heat as Deborah Josten parked her grey Toyota Camry alongside the curb. Her ugly, suburban house cast a dusty shadow across the front lawn. It was, compared to most of their most recent homes, a fairly long-term commitment at nearly four months. Oakland, CA, had proved surprisingly quiet.

The lady across the way waved and Deborah grit her teeth and waved back. Nosy bitch. She transferred a bag of groceries to her left hand so she could dig out her house key as she mounted the steps. They should have moved on weeks ago, but it was only a few weeks to the end of Neil’s tenth-grade year and she wanted to wait till after school ended to uproot them. Less conspicuous that way.

Her boss at the convenience store down the road had let her off work early today. Neil should already be home; his classes ended at three.

She unlocked the door and stepped in without announcing her arrival. It was part of her and Neil’s system. She had texted him earlier to let him know she was at the store, so he shouldn’t be surprised.

The door fell closed behind her and she stopped and scanned the hallway automatically. They kept things in a very specific order, though to a stranger it would only look like a banal entry with a handful of coats hung in a closet with both doors removed. The small entry rug was set so that it would get stuck on the bottom of the door and slide back when it was opened; she and Neil always reset it after they got in, but a stranger wouldn’t be paying attention to whether the carpet was already dislodged when they walked in, so it served as an early warning signal.

Everything had been reset immaculately, and Deborah let a little of the tension bleed from her shoulders as she hung up her jacket with the pockets zipped exactly halfway up. She kept her shoes on as she took the three steps required to check the living room.

She froze in the doorway.

Golden dust motes floated through the barren space. Sunshine came in the window at a steep angle, setting the hardwood floors glowing and warm.

She could just make out Neil’s brush of dark hair, flopped on the couch. The blond hair of the boy he was sleeping on was pillowed on the armrest, soft and tousled in the afternoon sun.

Her feet rooted into the ground. Neil mumbled something and shifted in his sleep. The other boy’s hands tightened on the back of Neil’s shirt for a moment, but neither of them roused. Deborah had shared a bed with Neil nearly every night for the past six years, and she knew he was a light sleeper. The click of a door or a muffled snore was all it took to wake him.

She took one step backwards, then another. Her mind was blank, unable to react as she backed all the way into the kitchen. The groceries landed on the kitchen table mechanically, as if her hands didn’t belong to her.

A laugh nearly burst from her lips at the banality of it. As if things weren’t ruined. As if she hadn’t utterly failed.

She pulled a carton of cigarettes from her pocket and lit up, heedless of the no-smoking lease. The countertop dug into the small of her back as she took a long drag, bracing her other hand against the side of the oven. The smoke seared her lungs, raking through her dry throat like sandpaper.

Smoke gathered in the small space, fuzzing out her vision. She’d disabled the fire alarm months ago, but she reached behind herself and knocked the window open anyway. The draft swirled the smoke around her, vortices forming and dissipating in the dim light.

She burned through half the pack of cigarettes before she heard any noise from the living room.

There was a minute of shuffling, then a soft sigh. “My mom will be home soon,” Neil said. “You should go.”

She couldn’t make out the response; perhaps there wasn’t one. Another minute or so passed before footsteps approached. Deborah was already positioned so that she faced the door, sucking on the end of another cigarette when Neil emerged from the living room opposite.

He froze in the doorway, eyes widening as he spotted her. She said nothing. The muscles in her jaw clenched, anger and fear twisting in her veins.

“Neil,” the other boy said from the living room. “What are you—”

The boy appeared behind Neil and stopped. He was shorter than Neil, though not by much, and dressed all in black. His shoulders tensed, eyes wary.

She blew out a cloud of smoke and met Neil’s gaze, tipping her head towards the door.

“Neil,” the other boy said.

Neil cut him off. “You should go,” he said. The other boy’s eyes cut over to Deborah, suspicious and distrustful. She gazed back blandly, not putting any of what she was feeling into her expression.

“It’s alright,” Neil said, turning to give the other boy a smile that looked like it tore his face open. “We’ll be okay.”

The other boy didn’t look convinced. He fixed his gaze on Deborah. “If you hurt him—”

She raised an eyebrow at his childlike ferocity. “I’m not going to hurt my own son,” she said flatly. She’d tried to beat the urge out of Neil in the first place, but it was too late for that now. The damage was already done.

The boy glared at her but allowed Neil to usher him down the hall. They exchanged a few muted words that she couldn’t make out, then the door clicked open and shut again.

Neil slunk back into the kitchen, shoulders hunched. Deborah took one last drag before stubbing her cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray.

“Pack your bag,” she said.

Neil swallowed hard and nodded. He disappeared into the bedroom without another word.

Deborah tipped the ashtray down the garbage disposal to destroy the DNA evidence. It took a scant few minutes to strip all of their belongings from the kitchen and living room, and by that point Neil had emerged with both of their duffel bags, already fully packed.

Deborah looked around at the small house one more time before grabbing the car keys. Neil trailed her down the hall, footsteps softer than a mouse. She cracked the door and peered up and down the street to verify that the other boy had really gone before heading down to the car.

They tossed their bags in the backseat and she slid in behind the wheel, facing forward. She took a deep breath, shucking her Deborah Josten personality like a worn-out snakeskin.

Mary put the car in gear and drove off down the road, Abram silent as a corpse in the passenger seat. His arms were folded over his stomach as he stared bleakly through the windshield, eyes hidden in shadow.

She turned the car onto the freeway, heading north. The Oakland suburbs faded behind them as they weaved between one interchangeable coastal neighbourhood and the next. Abram’s fingers twisted into his sweatshirt, still braced for a blow that wasn’t coming.

After half an hour, she turned off the freeway, following signs for a small nature reserve. The trees were still stark and leafless, snow lingering in the hollows beneath them. Nobody was using the small recreation area at the end of the road, which faced out across Carquinez Strait. A suspension bridge hovered over the water a few miles away, shimmering in the fading sunlight. A locked outhouse was nestled between a couple of large trees, and three picnic tables with fire rings were huddled next to the rocky shoreline.

Mary reversed into one of the parking spots. “Wallet,” she said. Abram handed it over mutely and she pulled out his fake ID and birth certificate, adding it to a small stack of papers she’d sorted out while he packed.

He trailed her to one of the firepits and stood back as she piled some dry wood and paper into the ring. Once she had a small blaze going, she fed the false papers into the fire. They had a temporary set in the trunk which they could use until they found somewhere satisfactory to pick up completely new ones.

A small snapping sound made her jump and whip around. Abram flinched, trying to hide his phone in his oversized sleeves.

Mary snatched the phone out of his unresisting hands and flipped it open. She knew his passcode—as he knew hers, for emergencies—and she punched it in, hands shaking. If he had exposed them—

There was only one outgoing text, timestamped less than a minute ago.

_Thank you. You were amazing._

She stared at the words until her eyes blurred. This was so much worse than she’d imagined. At least if she’d walked in on them fucking she could have screamed and raged and thrown the other boy out.

She took a deep breath and clenched her jaw, snapping the phone in half across her knee. It came apart too easily, barely making a cracking noise, but Abram still winced.

She hurled the pieces out into the water as hard as she could, then followed with her own phone. Deborah and Neil Josten were officially erased.

The ripples melted into the greater waves of the strait. She waited until she could no longer even be sure where they’d landed to speak.

“Tell me you understand now,” she said, voice brittle. “Why it’s forbidden. “

Abram squeezed his arms against his skinny torso. “Yes,” he whispered.

“Tell me why.”

His eyes pinched closed. His voice cracked down the middle like glass struck by a bullet. “Because I don’t want to leave.”

She turned, seizing his face with her hand and forcing him to make eye contact with her. His eyes were empty, hollowed out. It was like looking into the face of a dead man. “You can never go back there, you understand?" she said. "He will get you killed. Stay here, and they will find you, and you will die, slowly.”

Abram’s head nodded in her hand, but his dead eyes barely moved. She tightened her fingers, shaking him to wake him. “They will kill him,” she hissed. “They will kill him to get to you. _Do you understand_.”

A flicker of pain crossed his face. More fear for the other boy than for himself, she thought bitterly. “Yes, mom,” he said. “I understand.”

Anger twisted her stomach, but she released him, turning and running a hand through her frayed and dry hair. She shook her head. “All that time warning you off girls. Bah!”

“I’m sorry,” Abram said. He hadn’t moved, eyes falling to the dying fire. Mary kicked it over, checking that everything had burnt. The plastic cards were melted into unrecognizable clumps in the ashes.

Abram lingered by the water for a few minutes longer after she returned to the car, grabbing a screwdriver and fighting with the license plate to switch it out with one she’d stashed under the spare tire. Once that was done, she dropped into the driver’s seat again. She didn’t rush him. His small figure shivered in the wind as the sun went down behind the trees.

After the last light splashed off the water, he finally moved. He picked his way between the picnic tables and folded himself into the passenger seat. His cheeks were dry.

“You remember the rules,” she said, quiet as she gripped the wheel.

“Don’t look back,” Abram echoed dutifully. “Don’t slow down.”

“Be anyone but yourself,” she finished, “and never be anyone for too long.”

Abram nodded, blowing air out of his nose in a great gust.

“Get the map,” Mary said, starting the car. “We’re going to Reno.”

Abram dug a roadmap out of the glove compartment as Mary steered them back towards the freeway. His fingers traced roads and he murmured instructions until they got back on I-80 towards Sacramento.

He was remarkably quiet all the way until they hit the city limits. Mary waited him out. He might be her son, but he was a teenage boy nonetheless, and he had his father’s temper. His restlessness increased as the rush hour traffic slowed to a crawl.

“Out with it,” she said when she sensed he was ready to blow.

His fingers crumpled the map as his fists clenched in his lap. “Why is it that all we ever do is run?” he demanded. “We should take the fight to _them_.”

Mary barked out a laugh. “With what army?”

“We could go to Uncle Stuart—”

“And then what?”

“He’s your brother! He wouldn’t turn us away—”

“No,” she said. “He wouldn’t. He would start a war if I so much as asked. _And then what?_ ”

“We’d be free.”

“Free?” she scoffed. “We would owe our lives to the most powerful gangster in Britain. Is that the life you want?”

“He’s _family_.”

“He is what we were raised to be,” she said, voice cutting. “He and your father are more similar than either of them would ever admit. Eventually, he will ask for more than you are willing to give.”

“But—”

“Nothing in this life is free,” she said. “Not for people like us.”

Abram fumed for a second. “The FBI, then. If we went into witness protection, it would be no different than how we live now, except we’d have protection, and we could make them _pay._ ”

“They’ve broken witness protection before,” Mary said. “They can do it again."

Not Nathan himself. She’d borne witness to more than one furious rant about the apparent impenetrability of WITSEC.

The Moriyamas could do it, though. And if their Butcher went under investigation, they would pull some of those mighty strings, and even the Fed’s would crack. She would be turned over to Nathan, and Abram—well, it could go two ways, really. The Moriyamas might keep him and turn him over to the Ravens to try and recoup their losses, or they might let him die alongside her. Neither option bore contemplation.

“But what if—”

Mary’s temper, always frayed, snapped. She slammed the palm of her hand against the wheel and the horn blared. The car in front of her lurched forward half a foot, and another blast responded from behind her.

“Don’t you think if there was a way out I would have found it by now?” she demanded. “There is no fighting these people. Even hiding from them will probably be impossible.”

Abram’s face twisted with frustrated rage, his eyes pinching closed. His breathing was shallow and fast, like he was in pain.

She remembered how he’d breathed mere hours ago, wrapped up on the sofa in that other boy’s arms, so deeply asleep that he hadn’t noticed her get home. Calm and safe in a way that she’d never seen him before.

“I want more than this,” he said. The admission sounded like it was being carved out of his chest with a blade.

Mary inhaled deeply, and closed her heart. “There is no more than this,” she said harshly, peeling into the left lane, which had finally started to move. “This is all there is.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Right Next to You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22299535) by [Leahelisabeth (fortheloveofcamelot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofcamelot/pseuds/Leahelisabeth)




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